{"id":224693,"date":"2019-07-27T12:28:55","date_gmt":"2019-07-27T16:28:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=224693"},"modified":"2019-07-27T12:28:55","modified_gmt":"2019-07-27T16:28:55","slug":"france-wont-scrap-tax-on-tech-giants-despite-trump-threats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/07\/27\/france-wont-scrap-tax-on-tech-giants-despite-trump-threats\/","title":{"rendered":"France won’t scrap tax on tech giants, despite Trump threats"},"content":{"rendered":"
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After Trump slammed the \u201cfoolishness\u201d of the tax in a tweet Friday and promised reciprocal action, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said \u201cFrance will implement\u201d it anyway. (File photo<\/a>: Bruno Le Maire\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

PARIS \u2014 France is pushing ahead with a landmark tax on tech giants like Google and Facebook \u2014 despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats of retaliatory tariffs on French wine.<\/p>\n

After Trump slammed the \u201cfoolishness\u201d of the tax in a tweet Friday and promised reciprocal action, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said \u201cFrance will implement\u201d it anyway.<\/p>\n

According to Le Maire’s office, he added, \u201cthe universal taxation of digital activity is a challenge that concerns us all.\u201d He said the tax is meant as a temporary measure pending negotiations on an international tax deal.<\/p>\n

The 3% tax, which went into force this week, mainly concerns companies that use consumer data to sell online advertising.<\/p>\n

It’s designed to stop multinationals from avoiding taxes by setting up European headquarters in low-tax EU countries. Currently, companies such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Airbnb and Uber pay very little tax on their significant business in countries like France.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration says the tax is discriminatory against U.S. business.<\/p>\n

But the tax targets any digital company with yearly global sales worth more than 750 million euros ($835 million) and French revenue exceeding 25 million euros ($27 million). It should affect about 30 companies, based in the U.S, China and Europe \u2014 including France.<\/p>\n

The revenue threshold is supposed to allow more room for startups. France argues that tech giants are abusing their market dominance, notably through tax avoidance, and preventing others from a fair chance of competing.<\/p>\n

Also, the tax only concerns revenues earned in France \u2014 not sales in the U.S. or elsewhere.<\/p>\n

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer began an investigation earlier this month to determine whether the tax is discriminatory or unreasonable and restricts U.S. commerce. Such a finding would allow Trump to levy retaliatory tariffs.<\/p>\n

Trump derided French wines in his tweet, and later said he might hit them with retaliatory tariffs to French. He made a similar threat last year.<\/p>\n

Trump insisted Friday that he has a good relationship with French President Emmanuel Macron and had just spoken with him.<\/p>\n

After initially befriending the U.S. president despite their starkly different worldviews, Macron has increasingly stood up to the impulsive, America-first Trump on trade, climate change and Iran’s nuclear program.<\/p>\n

The tech tax is just their latest battleground, and will be a key tension point when the two men meet at a Group of Seven summit in France next month.<\/p>\n

France failed to persuade European Union partners to impose a Europe-wide tax on tech giants, but is now pushing for an international deal on it with the G-7 and the 34 countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PARIS \u2014 France is pushing ahead with a landmark tax on tech giants like Google and Facebook \u2014 despite U.S. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":224694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-angela-charlton","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224693"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":224695,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224693\/revisions\/224695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}